‘Top Chef’ Host Kristen Kish Reveals Her Secret for Eating 15 Plates of Poutine: “Eat Breakfast. Don’t Go In On An Empty Stomach”

In the world of reality show competitions, it’s hard to imagine bigger shoes to fill than Padma Lakshmi’s. After taking over from Top Chef Season 1 host Katie Lee, the international supermodel, cookbook author, comedian, and activist helped build Top Chef into the institution it now is, through a combination of glamour, disarming humor, and surprising affability. Kristen Kish, likewise a former model but also a chef, TV host and past Top Chef winner (Season 10), took over last season, the show’s 21st. 

Arguably a slightly weaker season, Kish nonetheless managed to make the hosting gig her own, taking home an Emmy nomination for her troubles and possibly more tellingly, it was rare to hear the Top Chef fanbase criticize her, even among a group arguably primed for a “you’re not my real mom!”-level period of transitional growing pains. 

Instead Kish fit right in from the beginning, matching Lakshmi for poise and knowledgeability, while adding first-hand experience as a competitor and a self-deprecating, dad-like dorkiness. Where Lakshmi could be dishy or tipsy (which was great TV), Kish is a model of control, always seeming firmly in charge of whatever story she’s trying to tell. That kind of intentionality can present challenges in unscripted TV, but Kish also allows her natural goof to shine through. Above all she never comes off false or derivative.

This week Kish returns for Top Chef Season 22 (as well as the Dish with Kish aftershow), which takes the show to Canada for a celebration of poutine, syrup, and all things moose-related. She takes the helm once again, of a show arguably at a crossroads. No longer the scruffy reality show it was when it began, Top Chef has become an institution all its own; its title now a legitimately coveted culinary honor. Can competitors who are this well established, many packing James Beard Awards and Michelin stars, be as entertaining as the reality show squabblers of the late aughts? Especially now that many competitors already have public images to protect and the industry at large has become so polished and camera-ready? How much overlap is there between celebrity chef and influencer nowadays, anyway?  

Kish doesn’t seem so concerned about all of that, which is probably so much blah-blah fodder for us culture writers anyway. A queer chef and Korean-American adopted to Midwestern parents, Kish gives the impression of someone who knows herself well, and probably got that way partly through her journey on the show – during which she was eliminated in the “Restaurant Wars” episode and battled back through five straight wins on Last Chance Kitchen to take the finale against Brooke Williamson, the latter herself a future Top Chef champion. They say history is written by the winners, and well, here she is: ready to spread the gospel of Top Chef and help this season’s crop of chefs do what all Top Chef competitors say they want to do: “cook their food.” 

DECIDER: Take me back to the season that you won. Where were you in your career and life at that point?

KRISTEN KISH: Gosh, that was a long time ago. 2013, I think. I was a sous chef at a ten-seat restaurant with four employees – really small, very intimate. I was my own prep cook, dishwasher, and executing service. You know when you look back on your life and you’re like, “Man, I would go back to that part of my life?” There’s just so much great stuff that happened in that moment. Not necessarily saying I want to leave what I am now to go do that, but I was living in a tiny little apartment with no kitchen, about four or five blocks from where I worked at this ten-seat restaurant, and me and my best friend were working together. It was an incredible time.

Do you think that your resume at the time would get you on Top Chef now?

First of all… no. I think that decision was made because of my boss and mentor [Barbara Lynch]. She pushed for me and I found out later on that she was the one that really advocated for me. I think I would’ve been passed over had it not been for her being like, No, trust me. And that meant a lot to me.

What did it mean to win?

I can tell you what it felt like to win, I’m not sure I can fully answer what it meant. It means a lot of different things and it takes different shapes over the course of my life. One, it felt like it was a relief to be done with the process. Two, this competing feeling inside of you, feeling like you absolutely deserved it and earned it. And then this other side being like, how did I just do that? You can feel simultaneously confident and secure in your skillset and your talent, but also when you’re alongside, in my case, 17 other chefs who were far more advanced in their careers, it’s like, wait, how did I just do that? And so those two feelings can be competing, but overall just kind of flabbergasted and surprised, but also really proud of myself.

Did you watch the show before you were on it? Were there Top Chef competitors that stood out to you before you were on? As Marc Maron would ask, “Who were your guys?”

I had watched a few seasons and I was working in kitchens, and that was back in the day when you had to pay for a recording service for your television. I didn’t have any money. I couldn’t validate spending $15 a month on a recording service for a television. I was working my tail off behind the line, and so I knew of Top Chef, but I wasn’t religiously watching it year after year. But I do believe that Season 6, that was the Michael and Brian Voltaggio, Kevin Gillespie season. I mean, that’s the season that they won the Emmy, and it stood out for so many reasons. I was like, oh my God, who are these wizards? And then watching Stephanie Izard win, that was huge. The first woman winning. I remember way back in the day, and again, I can’t remember if I ever watched the entire season, but I definitely did not live under a rock, and I caught clips and knew of people. I remember watching Hung [Hyunh, Season 3 winner] – like, crazy knife skills. Those are the people you watch thinking, Oh God, I could never do that. 

How much longer were you working in restaurants after you won?

Lemme do some math. I won when I was 27, 28. Again, this was a very long time ago, so I could be completely wrong, but I stayed working in restaurants through my 30th year. So three, four years maybe.

Winning the show now, do you think some people see it as a path out of restaurants?

Oh, no. I mean, you look at Danny Garcia, who just won Wisconsin, he jumped right back into restaurants and honoring his mentor and opening a fabulous new restaurant. So no, I think everybody’s journey is different. Everyone has different opportunities. If I knew the plan going into competing on Top Chef and what I was trying to get out of it, whatever that was, it was not this. I think just over time, every job and every opportunity presents a different thing, and then you are faced with deciding which way you want to go. I also think that maturity and age and experience pushes you into different directions when you’re least expecting it. When I was 20, I thought I knew what I wanted, but I definitely didn’t. I mean, how many 20-year-olds know what they want? I certainly was not one of them.

Was it a slow transition into being a television person or was there a point where you’re like, okay, well I have to make the decision now that I am going to be officially a television personality? 

I don’t think I’m an official television personality. I’m still a chef. I have a restaurant, I’m opening another restaurant. I might have jobs that are on television, but if someone asks me, “Hey, Kristen, what do you do?” I’m a chef. I cook. If all the television stuff went away, what would I be doing? Cooking. I don’t see myself as squarely one thing, and I don’t think any chef should have to see themselves as one thing. You’re allowed to be many things,

When chefs show up now, do you think they are more media trained out of the gate than you were or that they used to be when they arrived at the show?

I wasn’t media trained whatsoever. Just to be very clear, I had no idea what I was getting into. No, again, because the things leading up to people going on Top Chef, everyone’s coming from somewhere different as you watch their stories unfold. Some have been on television before, some have cooked on competition shows before. Some have never seen a lens of a camera and been spotlighted like that before. The starting line is very different. I will say one thing, I do think that a lot of chefs coming onto Top Chef are simply by the nature of the show and it being on forever, is that you understand, hopefully, who you are. And so if that comes across as “polished” or “media trained” because you know who you are and what you want to say and the message that you want to deliver– fine. I think that the most competitive chefs are the ones who very squarely knew exactly what they wanted to achieve.

Padma, when she left, mentioned the stress of having to eat so much food during the season and especially during the early rounds. Is it harder than we think to have to taste that much food? 

Depends on how big your appetite is! I think the most challenging part for me isn’t necessarily the volume of food, it’s just so many different flavors and trying to understand and capture each dish as a standalone as opposed to eating. Because sometimes you see us have three dishes in front of us and we’re going right down the line. But I can’t say that’s hard. I think the hardest part for this Season 22 in Canada was early on, maybe the first quickfire or second, I don’t remember, but it was a poutine challenge. And I gotta tell you, with every dish having a starch, a fried starch, a cheese, and a sauce component, by the end of it I was like, man, that was heavy. But you take a few bites and you move on.

Do you have to mentally prepare in any way when you’re like, okay, I gotta taste 14 poutines today?

You eat breakfast. Don’t go in on an empty stomach. I made that mistake in Season 21, and Gail [Simmons] very quickly was like, “I think you should eat breakfast.” I was like, I think that sounds weird, I’m about to eat a lot of food. And she was like, just trust me. I trusted her. Of course, she’s been doing it far longer than I have. And she was right. You have to put a little base down. I’m not saying stacks of pancakes, bacon, sausage and eggs, but just put a base down.

Just so your digestive system knows it needs to start early.

Correct. You just don’t dump a bunch of stuff on it all at once.

Do you watch the show now that you’re on it, that you’re living it? Do you watch the edited version?

A hundred percent. One, I feel like I have to in order to speak to certain parts of the show. But also, there’s so much that I don’t get to see that we all don’t get to see. Like OTFs, or their interviews, the talking head interviews, when you’re hearing what they’re thinking or how they got there – we don’t watch them. We don’t get to hear a lot of the backstory because when they’re in front of us and they deliver their dish, they have all of 45 seconds maybe to deliver what they want to deliver. We don’t get to see all of that until afterwards.

What did you think of how the last season ended in the show versus how it felt in the room? I know there were some people that were thinking that it didn’t look like Danny was going to win in the end and they were upset by the edit. Like they felt that the edit teased a different ending or something. How did you feel about it?

Well the rightful winner won. I can firmly tell you that that is a hundred percent the case. It’s 55 minutes on television I think, whatever it is, but it’s a 12-hour day for us, so there is no confusion whatsoever on when you decide who to name Top Chef. 

You didn’t think the edit created more mystery than there was in the room at the time?

I don’t know. You’d have to ask all the viewers. I was in the room, so I’m going off of what I felt and what I know.

As a home cook, you get in ruts where you cook the same things over and over. Do you get in that as someone with so much experience? And if so, how do you get out of your little cooking ruts?

At home? Oh yeah, I’m just like everybody else. You’re like, damn, chicken again? Yes, of course. I’m not special in that way. Could I cook anything that I wanted? Yes, I could and I could make every single night different. Do I want to? No. I like to go out to dinner, I like to do other things and I feel like sometimes food is just simply about getting food in your system and feeding yourself. And I hit that wall probably more times than is expected. But when that does happen?  Go to a friend’s restaurant.

What is your least favorite restaurant trend and what kind of restaurants do you wish there were more of?

Least favorite trend, gosh, maybe it’s a personal trend, but this idea that we all go out to dinner and share a bunch of things. I’m not going to lie, I want my own food. I don’t want 15 bites of 15 different things to create my meal. I want my food and I want to eat it. So maybe that’s a personal thing, but I feel like a lot of diners out there are like, “let’s order everything and try a bunch of stuff!” Totally, when I’m in the mood to do it. But if I’m hungry and I want to go out to dinner, I want to order what I want to eat and I want to eat it all.

There’s a guilt to small-plate style dining when you’re a big eater.

Yes, where you’re worried about like, oh shit, did I take more of the accoutrement and not the main? Also I just want to eat the plate of food as intended as it comes to me.

Do you think that being an influencer more broadly is sort of seen as part of being a chef? Does that feel like it’s more part of the gig, being able to do that, to speak to the camera and make cooking videos or whatever?

I don’t think that. I don’t know. What you see on social media these days is you have the influencers who are squarely cooking influencers. That being said, they come from a different background of experience. Some have been cooks and line cooks that have left the business and some just really like to cook. Top Chef, you don’t have to think about, oh, I’m going to go on and I’m going to cook and I’m going to talk to the camera. That’s not what Top Chef is. Top Chef is these people that have been in this industry that have cut their teeth at some of the greatest restaurants in the country, sometimes world, and you’re going on to represent yourself and do this thing. I can’t say that it feels like you have these people going like, “I’m going to go get my 15 minutes because I’m an influencer.” I also believe that everyone has influence. It doesn’t matter if your following is 5 million people on TikTok watching you make a cabbage salad or your mom who just really loves your fucking cooking. I think that everyone has influence about what they want to share and how they represent themselves. A chef is a chef, if you ask me.

Top Chef Season 22 returns to Bravo tonight at 9/8C, with new episodes airing on Thursdays. Stream episodes next day on Peacock.

Vince Mancini is a culture writer and old school blogger whose work has appeared in GQ, Defector, The Ringer, Uproxx, and more. He runs The #Content Report on Substack and podcasts about prestige TV on Pod Yourself. 

The post ‘Top Chef’ Host Kristen Kish Reveals Her Secret for Eating 15 Plates of Poutine: “Eat Breakfast. Don’t Go In On An Empty Stomach” appeared first on Decider.